Inspecting a Recovery Boiler with the Elios Indoor Drone: Reaching Areas That Were Once Impossible
Valmet, a leading provider of industrial technologies and services for the pulp, paper, and energy sectors, has successfully used Flyability’s Elios drone to inspect a recovery boiler. This innovative approach not only saved time and money but also allowed access to areas that were previously difficult or dangerous to reach manually.
Key Benefits at a Glance
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High-Quality Data
The Elios captured detailed visual data from hard-to-reach spots, helping identify specific burners and openings that required further inspection or maintenance. |
Cost Efficiency
By avoiding the need to build scaffolding, Valmet saved approximately $20,000 per inspection. |
Improved Access
The Elios enabled inspectors to closely examine burners, tubes, and other critical parts of the boiler without the limitations of manual methods. |
Overview
Valmet is one of the world's leading providers of industrial technologies and services, offering complex equipment such as boilers, tanks, and digesters. Their maintenance operations are essential for ensuring the reliability and performance of these systems.
Regular inspections are crucial to detect potential issues early, but they often involve significant downtime and high costs. For example, shutting down a boiler for inspection can cost up to a million dollars per day, making it vital to minimize outage times.
Customer Needs
Valmet continuously looks for ways to improve the efficiency of its maintenance processes. When they heard about the Elios drone, they decided to test it for use in tight, hard-to-reach areas like boilers and tanks.
In Mörrum, Sweden, Valmet needed to conduct an inspection of a recovery boiler. The structure was massive—60 meters tall—with many narrow spaces and obstacles. Traditional scaffolding was expensive and time-consuming, taking up to three days to set up and costing around $20,000 per inspection.
Solution
Instead of building scaffolding, Valmet used the Elios drone to conduct the inspection. This allowed them to start immediately without any setup time.
The Elios flew into tight areas around the top and bottom of the boiler, capturing high-resolution video and images. Inspectors no longer had to climb scaffolds or crawl through dark, narrow passages with flashlights.
Results
The inspection was a success, with inspectors impressed by the quality of the footage and data collected. The Elios flew inside the boiler for two hours, capturing every burner, pipe, and surface area.
This data was processed and included in the final report, which helped the morning shift identify areas requiring closer attention and repairs. As a result, the maintenance process became faster and more efficient.
Conclusion
Valmet is already exploring new applications for the Elios in other inspection scenarios. Some examples include:
- Recovery boilers where deposits can make manual inspections risky—Elios could help assess conditions before entry.
- Circulating fluidized bed power boilers with cyclones that are hard to access—Elios could reduce the need for manual checks.
- Ash hoppers, which are dangerous for human inspectors—using the Elios could eliminate the need for physical entry.
With its unique design and ability to navigate confined spaces, the Elios is proving to be a game-changer in industrial inspections, offering both safety and efficiency.
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